DGC Ep 182: Eternal Darkness (part one)

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where we this week we turn to the start of our annual spooky game content by looking at 2002's GameCube horror adventure Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. We situate the game in time a bit and talk about its critical and commercial reception, as well as the GameCube, before turning to the game proper. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary. Sections played: The first three levels Issues covered: how names appear backwards, our horror tradition, this year in games, Nintendo and close third parties, the mythology around a good GameCube game that disappeared, moderate sales but critical success, the Nintendo horror gap, Japanese lens on sales, understanding the mind of Nintendo, finding the comic spookiness rather than true horror, avoiding mature stuff for first party, cosmic horror, not connecting with Lovecraft, Mantorok the Corpse God, paying plenty homage to Lovecraft, Brett's tax on game lore, taking itself seriously, minimal insanity effects, Brett's never-empty bar, Tim describes an insanity effect, describing the initial experience, reading the Tome of Eternal Darkness and as a result playing the game, writers and writing and their madness, ancient history and its influence on modern day, using libraries to find information and history books, seats of American academia, delving into memory, using an Animus vs a book version, the Necronomicon, changes to Alex as to whether she's astrally projected, having multiple interpretations, Pious Augustus's transformation, making an uninformed choice, making better informed choices in Kingdom Hearts, starting to see the structure, being in the same location across multiple time periods, whether or not one required a manual, the forces for and against manuals, slowly adding mechanics in a Nintendo way. Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Resident Evil, Silent Hill 2, Thief, Nintendo GameCube, Metroid Prime (series), Resident Evil 0, Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, Animal Crossing, Super Mario Sunshine, Kingdom Hearts, Hitman 2, Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, Jedi Starfighter, Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper and the Thievious Raccoonus, Warcraft III, PlayStation 2, LucasArts, Silicon Knights, Denis Dyack, Tatsuya Hishida, Hiro Yamada, Shigeru Miyamoto, Satoru Iwata, Resident Evil 4, Capcom, Retro Studios, Nintendo Switch, Mother 3, Kirby Dream Course, SNES Classic, Disneyland, Haunted Mansion, Luigi's Mansion, Devil May Cry, Bayonetta (series), Cthulhu, HP Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe, In the Mouth of Madness, Assassin's Creed, Evil Dead 2, Alan Wake, Dungeons & Dragons, Kingdom Hearts, MYST, Super Mario Bros, Bill Roper, Lurking Horror, Infocom. Next time: The next three levels (until Lurking Horror) https://twitch.tv/brettdouville, @timlongojr, and @devgameclub [email protected]